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The English stage owes a debt of gratitude to both Monk and Rhodes. The former made glorious summer of the actors' winter of discontent; and the latter inaugurated the Restoration by introducing young Betterton. The son of Charles I.'s cook was, for fifty-one years, the pride of the English theatre. His acting was witnessed by more than one old contemporary of Shakspeare, – the poet's younger brother being among them, – he surviving till shortly after the accession of Charles II. The destitute actors warmed into life and laughter again beneath the sunshine of his presence. His dignity, his marvellous talent, his versatility, his imperishable fame, are all well known and acknowledged. His industry is indicated by the fact that he created one hundred and thirty new characters! Among them were Jaffier and Valentine, three Virginiuses, and Sir John Brute. He was as mirthful in Falstaff as he was majestic in Alexander; and the craft of his Ulysses, the grace and passion of his Hamlet, the terrible force of his Othello, were not more remarkable than the low comedy of his Old Bachelor, the airyness of his Woodville, or the cowardly bluster of his Thersites. The old actors who had been frozen out, and the new who had much to learn, could not have rallied round a more noble or a worthier chief; for Betterton was not a greater actor than he was a true and honourable gentleman. Only for him, the old frozen-outs would have fared but badly. He enriched himself and them, and, as long as he lived, gave dignity to his profession. The humble lad, born in Tothill Street, before monarchy and the stage went down, had a royal funeral in Westminster Abbey, after dying in harness almost in sight of the lamps. He deserved no less, for he was the king of an art which had well-nigh perished in the Commonwealth times, and he was a monarch who probably has never since had, altogether, his equal. Off as on the stage, he was exemplary in his bearing; true to every duty; as good a country gentleman on his farm in Berkshire as he was perfect actor in town; pursuing with his excellent wife the even tenor of his way; not tempted by the vices of his time, nor disturbed by its politics; not tippling like Underhill; not plotting and betraying the plotters against William, like Goodman, nor carrying letters for a costly fee between London and St. Germains, like Scudamore. If there had been a leading player on the stage in 1647, with the qualities, public and private, which distinguished Betterton, there perhaps would have been a less severe ordinance than that which inflicted so much misery on the actors, and which, after a long decline, brought about a fall; from which they were, however, as we shall see, destined to rise and flourish.

CHAPTER III
THE "BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE "YOUNG LADIES."

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the "sacred ground" of the English drama since the restoration of monarchy. At the Cockpit (Pit Street remains a memory of the place), otherwise called the Phœnix, in the "lane" above-named, the old English actors had uttered their last words before they were silenced. In a reconstruction of the edifice near, rather than on, the old site, the young English actors, under Rhodes, built their new stage, and wooed the willing town.

There was some irregularity in the first steps made to re-establish the stage, which, after an uneasy course of about four years, was terminated by Charles II., who, in 1663,¹⁵ granted patents for two theatres, and no more, in London. Under one patent, Killigrew, at the head of the King's Company (the Cockpit being closed), opened at the new theatre in Drury Lane, in August¹⁶ 1663, with a play of the olden time – the "Humourous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher. Under the second patent, Davenant and the Duke of York's Company found a home – first at the old Cockpit, then in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, the building of which was commenced in 1660, on the site of the old granary of Salisbury house, which had served for a theatre in the early years of the reign of Charles I. This little stage was lapped up by the great tongue of fire, by which many a nobler edifice was destroyed, in 1666. But previous to the fire, thence went Davenant and the Duke's troop to the old Tennis Court, the first of the three theatres in Portugal Row, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, from which the houses took their name.

In 1671, Davenant being dead, the company, under the nominal management of his widow, migrated to a house designed by Wren, and decorated by Grinling Gibbons. This was the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset Gardens. It was in close vicinity to the old Salisbury Court Theatre, and it presented a double face – one towards Fleet Street, the other overlooking the terrace which gave access to visitors who came by the river. Later, this company was housed in Lincoln's Inn Fields again; but it migrated, in 1732, to Covent Garden, under Rich. Rich's house was burnt down in 1808, and its successor, built by Smirke, was destroyed in 1856. On the site of the latter now stands the Royal Italian Opera, the representative, in its way, of the line of houses wherein the Duke's Company struggled against their competitors of the King's.

The first house of those competitors in Drury Lane was burnt in 1672, but the King's Company took refuge in the "Fields" till Wren built the new house, opened in 1674. The two troops remained divided, yet not opposed, each keeping to its recognised stock pieces, till 1682, when Killigrew, having "shuffled off this mortal coil,"¹⁷ the two companies, after due weeding, formed into one, and abandoning Lincoln's Inn to the tennis-players, Dorset Gardens to the wrestlers, and both to decay, they opened at the New Drury, built by Sir Christopher, on the 16th of November 1682. Wren's theatre was taken down in 1791; its successor, built by Holland, was opened in 1794, and was destroyed in 1809. The present edifice is the fourth which has occupied a site in Drury Lane. It is the work of Wyatt, and was opened in 1812.

Thus much for the edifice of the theatres of the last half of the seventeenth century. Before we come to the "ladies and gentlemen" who met upon the respective stages, and strove for the approval of the town, let me notice that, after the death of Oliver,¹⁸ Davenant publicly exhibited a mixed entertainment, chiefly musical, but which was not held to be an infringement of the law against the acting of plays. Early in May 1659, Evelyn writes: – "I went to see a new opera, after the Italian way, in recitative music and scenes, much inferior to the Italian composure and magnificence; but it was prodigious, that in a time of such public consternation, such a vanity should be kept up or permitted." That these musical entertainments were something quite apart from "plays," is manifest by another entry in Evelyn's diary, in January 1661: – "After divers years since I had seen any play, I went to see acted 'The Scornful Lady,' at a new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields."

Of Shakspeare's brother Charles, who lived to this period, Oldys says: – "This opportunity made the actors greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in Shakspeare's dramatic character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened by infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station, was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in "As You Like It;" and he who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which connected the old theatre with the new.

The principal actors in Killigrew's Company, from which that of Drury Lane is descended, were Bateman, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden, Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun, the Shatterels (William and Robert), and Wintersel. Later additions gave to this company Beeston, Bell, Charleton, "Scum" Goodman, Griffin, Hains, Joe Harris, Hughes, Lyddoll, Reeves, and Shirley.

The "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the Marshalls (Anne and Rebecca), Rutter, Uphill, whom Sir Robert Howard too tardily married, and Weaver. Later engagements included those of Mrs. Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and Verjuice. These were sworn at the Lord Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the "gentlemen," ten were enrolled on the Royal Household Establishment, and provided with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of the Lord Chamberlain they were styled "Gentlemen of the Great Chamber;" and they might have pointed to this fact as proof of the dignity of their profession.

The company first got together by Rhodes, subsequently enlarged by Davenant, and sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was in some respects superior to that of Drury Lane. Rhodes's troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lilliston, Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads employed to represent female characters – Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the great actor (drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for a time), Mosely, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Blagden, Harris, Price, and Richards; Medbourn, Norris, Sandford, Smith, and Young. The actresses were Mrs. Davenport, Davies, Gibbs, Holden, Jennings, Long, and Saunderson, whom Betterton shortly after married.

This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion, and the mode being imported from France, a French Company, with women among them, came over to London. Hoping for the sanction of their countrywoman, Queen Henrietta Maria, they established themselves in Blackfriars. This essay excited all the fury of Prynne, who called these actresses by very unsavoury names; but who, in styling them "unwomanish and graceless," did not mean to imply that they were awkward and unfeminine, but that acting was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming women born in an era of grace.

"Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, namely, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town" were "justly offended" at these women "or monsters rather," as Prynne calls them, "expelled from their own country," adds Brand, yet more sober-thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled, however, with boys, who shared with them that "line of business." "The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the "request" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633, "their female players in Italy and other foreign parts."

Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted¹⁹ by amateurs, including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell; the parts of Ianthe and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another lady. The piece is so stuffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and heroic generosity, that none more suitable could be found for ladies to appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to reopen the stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes, Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.

Now, the resumption of the old practice of "women's parts being represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved; when they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the prompter called "Desdemona" – "enter Giant!" Who the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known; but that she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January 1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was performed at Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done," says Pepys, "and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant did not bring forward his actresses before the end of June 1661, when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe; both these ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house. Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, the "Parson's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am told," are Pepys's own words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house."

By this time the vocation of the "boy-actresses" had altogether passed away; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent heroines depicted by our early dramatists.

There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's Company, who were admirable representatives of female characters before the Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun – all pupils of luckless Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished "actress." Of the three, Hart rose to the greatest eminence. His Duchess, in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the most successful of his youthful parts. After the Restoration, he laid down Cassio to take Othello, from Burt, by the King's command, and was as great in the Moor as Betterton, at the other house, was in Hamlet. His Alexander, which he created, always filled the theatre; and his dignity therein was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was so unapproachable, that when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with him.²⁰ Rymer styles him and Mohun the Æsopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted together (Amintor and Melantius) in the "Maid's Tragedy," the town asked no greater treat. Hart was one of Pepys's prime favourites. He was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents enchanted the ear. The humblest character intrusted to him was distinguished by his careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no audience; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's forgetfulness of his assumed character. In Manly, "The Plain Dealer," as in Catiline, he never found a successor who could equal him. His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he is said to have realised £1000 yearly after he became a shareholder in the theatre. He finally retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna.

There is a tradition that Hart, Mohun, and Betterton fought on the King's side at Edgehill, in 1642. The last-named was then a child, and some things are attributed to Charles Hart which belonged to his father. If Charles was but eighteen when his namesake, the King, returned in 1660, it must have been his father who was at Edgehill with Mohun, and who, perhaps, played female characters in his early days.

Burt, after he left off the women's gear, acted Cicero, with rare ability, in "Catiline," for the getting up of which piece Charles II. contributed £500 for robes. Of Clun, in or out of petticoats, the record is brief. His Iago was superior to Mohun's, but Lacy excelled him in the "Humourous Lieutenant;" but as Subtle, in the "Alchymist," he was the admiration of all playgoers. After acting this comic part, Clun made a tragic end on the night of the 3d of August 1664. With a lady hanging on his arm, and some liquor lying under his belt, he was gaily passing on his way to his country lodgings in Kentish Town, when he was assailed, murdered, and flung into a ditch, by rogues, one of whom was captured, "an Irish fellow, most cruelly butchered and bound." "The house will have a great miss of him," is the epitaph of Pepys upon versatile Clun.

Of the boys belonging to Davenant's Company, who at first appeared in woman's boddice, but soon found their occupation gone, some were of greater fame than others. One of these, Angel, turned from waiting-maids to low comedy, caricatured Frenchmen and foolish lords. We hear nothing of him after 1673. The younger Betterton, as I have said, was drowned at Wallingford. Mosely and Floid represented a vulgar class of women, and both died before the year 1674; but Kynaston and James Nokes long survived to occupy prominent positions on the stage.

Kynaston made "the loveliest lady," for a boy, ever beheld by Pepys. This was in 1660, when Kynaston played Olympia, the Duke's sister, in the "Loyal Subject;" and went with a young fellow-actor to carouse, after the play, with Pepys and Captain Ferrers. Kynaston was a handsome fellow under every guise. On the 7th of January 1661, says Pepys, "Tom and I, and my wife, to the theatre, and there saw 'The Silent Woman.' Among other things here, Kynaston, the boy, had the good turn to appear in three shapes. First, as a poor woman, in ordinary clothes, to please Morose; then, in fine clothes, as a gallant – and in them was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole house; and lastly, as a man – and then likewise did appear the handsomest man in the house." When the play was concluded, and it was not the lad's humour to carouse with the men, the ladies would seize on him, in his theatrical dress, and, carrying him to Hyde Park in their coaches, be foolishly proud of the precious freight which they bore with them.

Kynaston was not invariably in such good luck. There was another handsome man, Sir Charles Sedley, whose style of dress the young actor aped; and his presumption was punished by a ruffian, hired by the baronet, who accosted Kynaston in St. James's Park, as "Sir Charles," and thrashed him in that character. The actor then mimicked Sir Charles on the stage. A consequence was, that on the 30th of January 1669,²¹ Kynaston was waylaid by three or four assailants, and so clubbed by them, that there was no play on the following evening; and the victim, mightily bruised, was forced to keep his bed. He did not recover in less than a week. On the 9th of February he reappeared, as the King of Tidore, in the "Island Princess," which "he do act very well," says Pepys, "after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley's appointment."

The boy who used to play Evadne, and now enacted the tyrants of the drama, retained a certain beauty to the last. "Even at past sixty," Cibber tells us, "his teeth were all sound, white, and even as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty." Colley attributes the formal gravity of Kynaston's mien "to the stately step he had been so early confined to in a female decency." The same writer praises Kynaston's Leon, in "Rule a Wife and have a Wife," for its determined manliness and honest authority. In the heroic tyrants, his piercing eye, his quick, impetuous tone, and the fierce, lion-like majesty of his bearing and utterance, "gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration."

When Cibber played Syphax, in "Cato," he did it as he thought Kynaston would have done, had he been alive to impersonate the character. Kynaston roared through the bombast of some of the dramatists with a laughable earnestness; but in Shakspeare's monarchs he was every inch a king – dignified and natural. The true majesty of his Henry IV. was so manifest, that when he whispered to Hotspur, "Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it," he conveyed, says Cibber, "a more terrible menace in it than the loudest intemperance of voice could swell to." Again, in the interview between the dying King and his son – the dignity, majestic grief, the paternal affection, the injured, kingly feeling, the pathos and the justness of the rebuke – were alike remarkable. The actor was equal to the task assigned him by the author – putting forth "that peculiar and becoming grace which the best writer cannot inspire into any actor that is not born with it."

Kynaston remained on the stage from 1659 to 1699. By this time his memory began to fail and his spirit to leave him. These imperfections, says the generous Colley, "were visibly not his own, but the effects of decaying nature." But Betterton's nature was not thus decaying; and his labour had been far greater than that of Kynaston, who created only a score of original characters, the best known of which are, Harcourt, in the "Country Wife;" Freeman, in the "Plain Dealer;" and Count Baldwin, in "Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage." His early practice in representing female characters affected his voice in some disagreeable way. "What makes you feel sick?" said Kynaston to Powell – suffering from a too riotous "last night." "How can I feel otherwise," asked Powell, "when I hear your voice?"

Edward Kynaston died in 1712, and lies buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of his day, Kynaston was the greatest of the "boy-actresses." So exalted was his reputation, "that," says Downes, "it has since been disputable among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly touched the audience as he."

In one respect he was more successful than Betterton, for he not only made a fortune, but kept what he had made, and left it to his only son. This son improved the bequest by his industry as a mercer in Covent Garden; and, probably remembering that he was well-descended from the Kynastons of Oteley, Salop, he sent his own son to college, and lived to see him ordained. This Reverend Mr. Kynaston purchased the impropriation of Aldgate; and, despite the vocations of his father and grandfather, but in consequence of the prudence and liberality of both, was willingly acknowledged by his Shropshire kinsmen.

Kynaston's contemporary, James Nokes, was as prudent and as fortunate as he; but James was not so well-descended. His father (and he himself for a time) was a city toyman – not so well to do, but he allowed his sons to go on the stage, where Robert was a respectable actor, and James, after a brief exercise of female characters, was admirable in his peculiar line. The toyman's son became a landholder, and made of his nephew a lord of the soil. Thus, even in those days of small salaries, players could build up fortunes; because the more prudent among them nursed the little they could spare with care, and of that little made the very utmost.

Nokes was, to the last night of his career, famous for his impersonation of the Nurse in two plays; first, in that strange adaptation by Otway of "Romeo and Juliet" to a Roman tragedy, "Caius Marius;" and secondly, in Nevil Payne's fierce, yet not bombastic drama, "Fatal Jealousy." Of the portraits to be found in Cibber's gallery, one of the most perfect, drawn by Colley's hand, is that of James Nokes. Cibber attributes his general excellence to "a plain and palpable simplicity of nature, which was so utterly his own, that he was often as accountably diverting in his common speech as on the stage." His very conversation was an unctuous acting; and, in the truest sense of the word, he was "inimitable." Cibber himself, accomplished mimic as he was, confessedly failed in every attempt to reproduce the voice and manner of James Nokes, who identified himself with every part so easily, as to reap a vast amount of fame at the cost of hardly an hour's study. His range was through the entire realm of broad comedy, and Cibber thus photographs him for the entertainment of posterity.

"He scarce ever made his first entrance in a play but he was received with an involuntary applause, not of hands only, for those may be, and have often been, partially prostituted and bespoken, but by a general laughter, which the very sight of him provoked, and nature could not resist; yet the louder the laugh the graver was his look upon it; and sure the ridiculous solemnity of his features were enough to have set a whole bench of bishops into a titter, could he have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses which by the laws of comedy folly is often involved in, he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point whether you ought not to have pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full eye into such a vacant amazement, such a palpable ignorance of what to think of it, that his silent perplexity (which would sometimes hold him several minutes) gave your imagination as full content as the most absurd thing he could say upon it."

This great comic actor was naturally of a grave and sober countenance; "but the moment he spoke, the settled seriousness of his features was utterly discharged, and a dry, drolling, or laughing levity took such full possession of him, that I can only refer the idea of him to your imagination." His clear and audible voice better fitted him for burlesque heroes, like Jupiter Ammon, than his middle stature; but the pompous inanity of his travestied pagan divinity, was as wonderful as the rich stolidity of his contentedly ignorant fools.

There was no actor whom the City so rejoiced in as Nokes; there was none whom the Court more delighted to honour. In May 1670, Charles II., and troops of courtiers, went down to Dover to meet the Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields comedians. When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite of French ladies and gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the prevailing fashion, in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with broad sword belts, the English comedians played before the royal host and his guests the play founded on Molière's "Ecole des Femmes," and called "Sir Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur Addel, in dressing for which part he was assisted by the Duke of Monmouth. In order that he might the better ape the French mode, the duke took off his own sword and belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. At his first entrance on the stage, King and Court broke into unextinguishable laughter, so admirably were the foreign guests caricatured; at which outrage on courtesy and hospitality, the guests, naturally enough, "were much chagrined," says Downes. Nokes retained the duke's sword and belt to his dying day, which fell in the course of the year 1692. He was the original representative of about forty characters, in plays which have long since disappeared from the stage. Charles II. was the first who recognised, on the occasion of his playing the part of Norfolk, in "Henry VIII.," the merit of Nokes as an actor.²²

James Nokes left to his nephew something better than the sword and belt of the Duke of Monmouth, namely, a landed estate at Totteridge, near Barnet, of the value of £400 a year. Pepys may have kissed that nephew's mother, on the August day of 1665, when he fell into company near Rochester with a lady and gentleman riding singly, and differing as to the merits of a copy of verses, which Pepys, by his style of reading aloud, got the husband to confess that they were as excellent as the wife had pronounced them to be. "His name is Nokes," writes the diarist, "over against Bow Church… We promised to meet, if ever we come both to London again, and at parting, I had a fair salute on horseback, in Rochester streets, of the lady."

Having thus seen the curtain fall upon the once "boy-actresses," I proceed to briefly notice the principal ladies in the respective companies of Killigrew and Davenant, commencing with those of the King's House, or Theatre Royal, under Killigrew's management, chiefly in Drury Lane. The first name of importance in this list is that of Mrs. Hughes, who, on the stage from 1663 to 1676, was more remarkable for her beauty than for her great ability. When the former, in 1668, subdued Prince Rupert, there was more jubilee at the Court of Charles II., at Tunbridge Wells, than if the philosophic Prince had fallen upon an invention that should benefit mankind. Rupert, whom the plumed gallants of Whitehall considered as a rude mechanic, left his laboratory, put aside his reserve, and wooed in due form the proudest, perhaps, of the actresses of her day. Only in the May of that year Pepys had saluted her with a kiss, in the green-room of the Kings House. She was then reputed to be the intimate friend and favourite of Sir Charles Sedley. "A mighty pretty woman," says Pepys, "and seems, but is not, modest." The Prince enshrined the frail beauty in that home of Sir Nicholas Crispe, at Hammersmith, which was subsequently occupied by Bubb Doddington, the Margravine of Anspach, and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. She well-nigh ruined her lover, at whose death there was little left beside a collection of jewels, worth £20,000, which were disposed of by lottery, in order to pay his debts. Mrs. Hughes was not unlike her own Mrs. Moneylove in "Tom Essence," a very good sort of person till temptation beset her. After his death she squandered much of the estate which Rupert had left to her, chiefly by gambling. Her contemporary, Nell Gwyn, purchased a celebrated pearl necklace belonging to the deceased Prince for £4520, a purchase which must have taken the appearance of an insult, in the eyes of Mrs. Hughes. The daughter of this union, Ruperta, who shared with her mother the modest estate bequeathed by the Prince, married General Emanuel Scrope Howe. One of the daughters of this marriage was the beautiful and reckless maid of honour to Caroline, Princess of Wales, whom the treachery of Nanty Lowther sent broken-hearted to the grave, in 1726. Through Ruperta, however, the blood of her parents is still continued in the family of Sir Edward Bromley.